Thinking of starting a coaching or consulting business or already have one?
In that case, you’re going to need a host of tools and apps to help you run your business – and even more so, grow it.
From tools to help you monetize your business to tools that help you become more productive, these apps will ensure that you’re as productive as possible with your time and that you’re making things easy both for you and for your clients.
But most of all, these tools can help you grow your business – and that’s the biggest focus for this list: highly useful tools that will not only help you save time but will also help you grow your coaching or consulting business and help you make more money online.
In this blog post, discover 4 essential tools to help you earn more from your coaching or consulting business.
Acuity Scheduling – for easy, stress-free scheduling
One of the first tools you’ll need for your coaching or consulting business is a good appointment scheduling tool. Handling all of these appointments manually, via email and other such platforms is incredibly time-consuming and will likely lead to plenty of errors (read: double bookings!)
With Acuity Scheduling, on the other hand, you won’t need to lift a finger beyond a few easy settings.
The way it works is super easy: you set your availability and then you let it do the rest of the work for you. Your visitors can either go directly to your calendar and set an appointment or, if you’re chatting with them via email or another platform, you can easily direct them to your calendar with a unique link.
Your calendar is completely customizable, which means you can set the exact times when you’re unavailable, automatically adjust for time zones and let your clients cancel and reschedule by themselves.
What’s more, you can also add client intake forms so that whenever someone schedules a meeting with you, you can ask them all the information you need from them (such as who they are, why they want to hire you and what particular areas they want to focus on during the session).
Once someone schedules an appointment, you can send them automatic branded confirmations, reminders and follow-ups; plus, you can also accept payment directly, either via Stripe, Square or PayPal.
Premium.Chat – for an easier way to earn from your coaching or consulting business
Premium.Chat offers a highly convenient solution for both you and your clients: a way to talk to your coaching clients and charge either a flat fee or by the minute, for both text and video chats.
To get started, all you have to do is create a Premium.Chat profile and you’ll get a unique link which you can share wherever you like: your social media, via email, your website and so on.
Even better, you can also create a chat widget which you can then add to your website so that any time a visitor wants to speak with you (either via text or video chat), they’ll be charged automatically based on your settings.
The app works worldwide, as well as on any device or desktop browser; what’s more, you can choose to get paid either via direct deposit or PayPal.
In terms of setting your rates, you have two options; either get paid by the minute or set a flat rate for all clients:
Basically, it’s an easier, more convenient way to get paid for your time and ensure you’re cutting down on time-wasters (which, unfortunately, are quite prevalent in this industry!)
Hubspot – for powerful customer relationship management and easy follow-ups
As a business that works directly with clients, a good CRM (customer relationship management) is a must-have; it allows you to keep track of all your leads, past and present clients, as well as any potential clients.
And there are few CRMs out there as good as Hubspot. Plus, you can get started with it for free and only start paying for more features and increased access as your business and your leads grow.
Hubspot features several useful marketing and sales tools, but we’ll be focusing on the CRM and Sales Hub here.
So, why do you need it?
For one thing, it helps you manage all of your contacts from one place; you can keep track of all their website activity, your email correspondence, as well as make notes and set reminders to follow-up with them:
Another very useful feature is that Hubspot gives you complete visibility over your sales pipeline; basically, you’ll be able to see all of your sales activity in one place, all of your closed, lost and in-progress deals and other important data about your efforts:
The reason why such a tool is so valuable for a coaching or consulting business is that ultimately, it helps you keep track of all your leads so that you can close more deals; without it, you’ll forget to follow-up, you’ll have to look through your correspondence to find the information you need and you’ll likely forget about certain deals and strong leads.
With Hubspot though, you’ll have all the information you need about your leads and clients at your fingertips and you’ll get automatic reminders to ensure you always follow up!
OptinMonster – for generating more leads and conversions from your website
How much of your website traffic is actually converting?
After all you get all this traffic, but if it’s not converting – what’s the point?
And that’s where OptinMonster comes in to help. It’s a very powerful conversion optimization and lead generation tool that can be used by any website to help generate more leads, subscribers and of course, sales.
So, how does it work?
Basically, it’s all about creating offers using lead capture forms and then using their targeting and segmentation engine to show your offer to visitors based on their behaviour on your website.
OptinMonster feature over 75 templates for lead capture forms (such as pop-ups, full-screen overlays, floating bars and slide-ins) that are super easy to customize to suit your branding and your objectives.
What’s more, it also features on-site retargeting and personalization; in other words, you can display personalized offers to each of your visitors, based on whether they’re a new or returning visitor or an existing customer.
Another popular – and very useful! – feature is the so-called Exit Intent Technology which basically detects when a visitor is about to leave your site and shows them a personalized offer to help convert them before they’re lost forever:
Conclusion
Check out these 4 powerful tools to help you grow your coaching or consulting business, be more productive and get more clients for your coaching or consulting business.
Leverage them to grow your business, as well as help you become more productive: without the right tools and apps to help, you’ll lose time unnecessarily – and even lose opportunities for getting more clients.
What are some of your favourite and must-have tools for your coaching or consulting business?
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